The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 081 Effective Practice – Tips, Habits, & Mindsets: Dr. Renée-Paule Gauthier & Eric Mrugala

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

Today I'm bringing you a conversation previously aired on the Violin Podcast, hosted by Eric Mrugala.  On the Violin Podcast Eric interviews violinists worldwide on a bi-weekly basis discussing violin news, practice tips, career advice, and their journey with the violin. Now, this was for the Violin Podcast, but it's valuable information for all musicians, regardless of the instrument. Eric and I talked about How to solve problems in the practice room How to prepare optimally for performances, auditions, and competitions Effective mindful practice that yields results The importance of knowing yourself when it comes to working efficiently …and much more! I hope you enjoy this conversation with Eric Mrugala from the Violin Podcast, and that you find some useful tips and inspiration for your work today! Let's go to the show!   MORE ABOUT THE VIOLIN PODCAST We interview violinists worldwide on a bi-weekly basis discussing violin news, practice tips, career advice, and their journey with the violin. The podcast: https://violinpodcast.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/violinpodcast/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/violinpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/violinpodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzi3HNgHFQ5ndr9K2OeJYag   Visit www.mindoverfinger.com and sign up for my newsletter to get your free guide to an outstanding practice using the metronome!  This guide is the perfect entry point to help you bring more mindfulness and efficiency into your practice and it's filled with tips and tricks on how to use that wonderful tool to take your practicing and your playing to new heights.   Join the Mind Over Finger Tribe for additional resources on practice and performing. If you enjoyed the show, please leave a review on iTunes!  I truly appreciate your support!     THANK YOU: Most sincere thank you to composer Jim Stephenson who graciously provided the show's musical theme!  Concerto #1 for Trumpet and Chamber Orchestra – Movement 2: Allegro con Brio, performed by Jeffrey Work, trumpet, and the Lake Forest Symphony, conducted by Jim Stephenson. Thank you to Susan Blackwell for the introduction!  You can find out more about Susan, her fantastic podcast The Spark File, and her work helping creatives of all backgrounds expand their impact by visiting https://www.susanblackwell.com/home. Also a HUGE thank you to my fantastic producer, Bella Kelly!   MIND OVER FINGER: www.mindoverfinger.com https://www.facebook.com/mindoverfinger/ https://www.instagram.com/mindoverfinger/

You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast, episode number 81. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice and building a purposeful career. And now your host, violinist, teacher and high performance coach, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope you're doing great. Today, I'm bringing you a conversation I had with Eric Murgala on his show, The Violin Podcast. On The Violin Podcast, Eric interviews violinists worldwide on a bi-weekly basis, discussing violin use, practice tips, career advice, and their journey with the violin. Now, this was for The Violin Podcast, but it's valuable

information for all musicians, regardless of the instrument. Eric and I talked about how to solve problems in the practice room, how to prepare optimally for performances, auditions, and competitions, effective mindful practice that yields results, the importance of knowing yourself when it comes to working efficiently, and much more. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Eric Murgala from The Violin Podcast and that you find some useful tips and inspiration for your work today. Let's go to the show. Hello, welcome to The Violin Podcast. For everybody who's watching i have dr renee paul gaultier with me on this wonderful episode seven of the violent podcast dr renee thank you so much for joining us this week i'm so happy to be with you

eric yeah and it's actually uh we had we had a small chat before we began and it's nice to be able to talk to another violent podcaster i think that's the most exciting thing about this interview for me so there are a lot of topics that i do want to talk about with you uh with you know the Mind Over Finger podcast with practice tips, audition tips. But before we get into all of that, I just want to have the audience get to know you a little bit. Can you just describe what you've been doing with your career in the violin? Yes, absolutely. I'm originally from Quebec, so that's where the French accent comes from. And I'm from a family of musicians. My father was a music teacher and so was my mother. And my mother actually ended up founding a school of

music and nonprofit school. So I kind of grew up under her desk over there, surrounded by music. And the origin story I like to talk about, because it's very influential in my life, is the fact that my mother always practiced with me as a kid. So for me, it wasn't, you know, a once a week thing, but it was a daily activity. And my, you know, I would say my actions were always guided. So mindfulness and focus in practice were introduced to me from a very early age, even though I didn't really know what was going on right now. I just thought it was so annoying because I had to practice with my mom all the time. And, you know, we had our moments, wasn't always easy. And I also had a wonderful violin teacher starting at the age of nine who was

really keen on having his students really pay attention and listen. And, you know, we're often given a lot of techniques and tips, but he was always directing our attention and saying, do you hear that? Do you feel that? And asking a lot of questions. And it's really kind of where my kind of interest for mindful practice came, even though I didn't realize what was being taught to me at the time and it's a little bit later when I started my own career and I realized that I had times where I would practice aimlessly and just punch in time in the practice room and then there are other times where you know you're in the pinch you're in the crunch you have a competition and you need to get those results because the concert or the competition or the audition are

the next day and I started to realize that I had different practice techniques for those time I was practicing very differently. It was very focused and, um, you know, I could set goals. I knew how to, you know, target my attention towards very specific things and fix them very quickly. Um, anyway, after school, I, um, I did a bunch of stuff with chamber music and I joined New World Symphony and ended up in Ottawa, Ontario, where I was with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and, um, did, uh, one year in the Calgary Phil. And then, you know, my husband's career brought us here to Chicago, where I now am. And I play with a different, you know, bunch of organizations around town. And I also teach at North Park University. And it's really when I started

teaching there that I was really focused on figuring out a way to really help my students practice efficiently. And also, as time went on, I really wanted to rekindle my love of playing, my love of practicing, because I think that we all start playing music because we loved it at some point. You know, there's always like that moment in our childhood where we remember that feeling of, oh, wow, this is awesome. This is what I want to do. And sometimes when we turn professional, we lose some of that. You know, there's a lot of competition and jaded people out there and, you know, long commutes and low pay and all of those things that kind of, I would say, erode at our enthusiasm. So for me, it was ways to figure out how to

really help my students practice mindfully, but also really develop a love of the process itself and keep the enthusiasm going. So in a big nutshell, this is it. And of course, practice is such a huge topic. How do we practice? How long do we practice? You know, different practice techniques. I know, I do want to comment on what you said about, you know the joy of music because sometimes we don't we don't make practice fun enough for us and i i happen to be teaching a lot of youngsters these days from ages five uh through high school and trying to create some creative ways for them to enjoy the practice to enjoy the process and it's always a struggle wouldn't you agree it's always a challenge yes absolutely there's this

I don't know this aura of it's so cool to punch in the time and work hard and you know it's like we see these montage from movies where you've got you know Rocky running up the mountain and in the snow and he's struggling and we we imagine that this is how practicing has to feel but I find that for myself the more I really I think it starts with asking questions really not just moving aimlessly right like you can't just go like this for two hours and call that practicing you got to think a little bit so then we when we ask questions we figure out how to solve problems but also ask ourselves okay how can i make that enjoyable how can i make that interesting it really comes with making things interesting and then we become engaged and then not only do

we have more fun, but we solve problems faster. Yeah. And I think that's also part of the entrepreneurial mindset that I think that you and I have when it comes to starting the podcast and trying to run a business. It's always the question of asking why, you know, why, like, why am I out of tune? Why do I sound screechy? Why, you know, all those, I think the first question should be, why is it this way? I know that for myself, it's worked for me. And please leave a comment down below if you find there are any other questions or strategies that you think that help are helpful but asking why something is first why is it out of tune why is my hand you know little details like that can really again help with the process of practicing and you talk a lot about that in

your podcast can you talk about how the podcast started where the idea came from yes i remember the moment the idea came from i spent a lot of time in the car in chicago and anyone who lives in the big city yeah um that i-90 94 merger is a is a beast and it's the worst the eden expressway totally off topic but the eden to the kennedy that merger it's the worst and it's always under construction. And so no, nothing is near, you're always in the car. And I love listening to podcasts so much. So I listened to tons of podcasts. And even though I, you know, love all a lot of the podcasters out there, and so many of the wonderful episodes that I've been listening to, you will probably find the same thing that I did, because you created your own

podcast is that sometimes there are questions that you have in your mind as a guest is speaking on the podcast and you want to ask that question and you want to know the answer to this question or maybe the format doesn't fit you perfectly and then i remember i was sitting i was actually driving back from the iowa music educator conference where i had just given a talk about my deep practice model and i was listening to a podcast and i kept running questions in my head and once all of a sudden I thought I should have my own podcast and once I had this idea in my head it never left and at first I was like well no you don't just start a podcast like this and I'm not a techie I don't understand technology it's probably expensive and then I started to think

you know I could just research how it works and see if it's doable and there was something about i i just love talking about practice and music making and preparing for concerts and what makes us love music and i just love these conversations so much and i have so many fun conversations with a lot of friends that sometimes i think oh if my students could sit in on this conversation this would you know illustrate perfectly what i was telling so and so in her lesson yesterday and um so it's kind of all of these things coming together that really just made me want to sit down have these conversations recorded for uh myself but also for my students and for anyone who might benefit from it and yeah you know it's it's been so much fun it's a lot of work it's a lot of work

but it's so much fun yeah i think the first step is just to get started i think a lot of people are just so afraid like am i am i worthy of you know the podcast medium and i remember my first episode on my other podcast the everyday musician where i i interview local musicians doing amazing things in their communities and i remember i was listening to myself like oh god i sound awful and that kind of reflected you know how i thought of myself as a violinist i'm like oh i really sound like that but i think the i think the beauty of podcasts is that you can kind of just you know you put on your earbuds and you just go wherever and you can know you have like you know your voice in their ears and my voice in their ears right and i think that's the beauty of how

convenient podcasting is and and uh it's been such a blast you know i love podcasting especially what you what you're saying with talking and learning new things from other you know professionals and master violinists and i really like what you said that you use a podcast to help your students because that's is very similar to what i do and with the everyday musician i talk about you know that everybody goes through some kind of struggle to achieve their dream right and to give them the grand scheme of things the point of it is to help with understanding that you know it's a process it's a journey it takes a long time it doesn't happen overnight especially in the society that we have um we want things very quickly and I think

especially with what you're saying with practicing and knowing how to practice and mindful practicing does take some work and take some getting used to so um and you know another reason I love podcasting is that there's a completion feeling that we never get from practicing and performing you know how did you ever walk off stage and think that Mendelssohn concerto I just nailed it That's it. Can't be better. You know, don't have to do it ever again. But with a podcast episode, it's like you say, like playing music, it's a process it's ever evolving. We're always learning, always growing. But with a podcast, I record it. I edit it. I put it out there.

Is it perfect? I don't know. Is it NPR quality? Probably not. But it's bringing value to, you know, hopefully one person and it's out there and it's finished. And I think that's probably the same satisfaction that people get when they're picking up a hobby. You know, you knit the sweater. Once it's done, it's done. So this, it's kind of that feeling of creating something and it's out there and it's finished and you can move on to the next episode and the next conversation and revisit it any time and that's not a feeling I get often in the practice room right with violin we're never done you know if for one moment you think you're done with the piece I think that's already the

wrong mindset especially if you're professional because you're like okay there's Paganini Concerto number one I played it I touched it I don't have to touch it again right but you know especially scales you know I emphasize scales with my students I'm like you know scales and arpeggios you'll never be done with them i even like i even put them you know i try to i try to think of the student in their shoes i'm like okay well if i was 10 years old what was i thinking back then right and try to you know make it make it a fun approachable way but yeah especially like scales and arpeggios those are those are that that's that in itself is a journey yes and In scale and arpeggios, they often feel dreadful because we don't try to make them interesting.

We're passively playing them. My teacher says I should practice my scale. And sure, maybe once in a while we'll practice a shift. Or once in the blue moon, someone will pay attention to their sound quality when they're practicing their scale. I'm just kidding. Yeah, and the thing with scales is that they feel dreadful because people usually just play through them without thinking much. But I think that if we really make the effort to make them interesting by asking questions and by really investigating and maybe throwing in some games with ourselves, scales can be so much fun. And, you know, as we know, they are the basis of our technique.

So there are ways to make them fun. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. And let's talk about auditions. because auditions are a tricky topic. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that. Yes, you know, it's a necessary evil. I think that the process is far from perfect, but it's, you know, it's what we came to

after years of trying many, many things. And, you know, maybe there will be another way in the future. I'm not sure. And at the same time, I think if we approach auditions as a step in our journey, an opportunity for growth. You know how it is, like if you do the Tour de France, you have all of these, you know, one day after day and you stop and you rest. So each audition, I mean, if you win the first one, that's amazing. But if not, they can be

just another stepping stone to the next big thing. And it's kind of the same way when we're kids, right the young kids take I'm in Illinois so we have ILMEA you have in Canada there's a rural conservatory so you get your next RCM level and we do juries and you know I think that competitions and auditions can be really wonderful instruments of growth but they have to be approached in that mindset yeah especially with orchestra auditions what was the process like when you were taking auditions in the past like how can you describe to the listener to the viewer what an audition process entails it's very different for me each time and like I said I was really good at prioritization that's a hard word for a French Canadian but I

think it came out even for English because prioritization yeah it's really difficult so knowing what to practice and how being organized is really good I mean the first thing I would do for everyone I'm sorry it sounds like such a simple thing but just put the music together, you know, start there. But after that, there's so many, so many tips. I have my own program where I talk to people about preparing for auditions. There's some great resources out there. One of my favorite book is Performance Success by Don Green. And Audition Success, but also by Don Green is a great compliment to this book. But I would really start with performance success and there's so many mental strategies we can use as well it's

very important but I think that in auditions we need to think of being a better musician and preparing each excerpts really well so it's hand in hand so you have to really attend to the fundamentals so don't neglect any of the technical work the skills the exercises all of these things but really keep musicianship at um you know really high on your list of priorities it's really important and i remember that um i remember my first big audition after new world symphony was San Francisco Symphony and I don't know I didn't really have a process and I I walked in the room it was like it's such a learning curve because there's so many things um from showing up at 8 a.m and then picking number 53 or something like this and then like having to aim in the San

Francisco streets for hours and learning that you shouldn't do that and um just showing up in the room and feeling really like having an out-of-body experience it's really like oh my gosh who is this person playing I don't know and I came out of this of course I did in advance and I came out of it with such a clear idea of the things I would want to do in the future which was to be really organized record myself I also came up with an idea of keeping track of my notes and note takings sure We can all give a million short, not short charts. I'm thinking of my two kids. You can keep like practice charts and things like this,

but don't just take someone's chart and fill it. You know, you have to put some thoughts into how do I like to work and come up with your own note-taking process. I think that's really important. And charts can be great. They can be great inspirations, but I think it's important to figure out a way to keep track of your progress that works for you. And that's really important. Each audition will be different.

I remember the one of the last audition I took, I was so tired of these excerpts and the list wasn't too long. And I knew most of them and I thought, you know, I really don't feel it. I don't want to practice, but I want to take this audition and I want to do well. So what can I do? And the answer was obvious i need to play better in general if i want to play these excerpts better because i've practiced them tons how can i get them better and who wants to practice shuman too again you know so i started having tons of fun with picking out exercises and modifying etudes to fit whatever excerpt and just uh just turn passages from each excerpt into a mini etude inside that passage and just really come up with as many creative ways to practice them as I could

because I was at that stage where I was really kind of running in circles and that made the process so much fun. I think we often forget with orchestra excerpts, by the way, I like practicing orchestra excerpts. I think they're fun. It's a great etude practice, but I think we often forget that it's also the music that we need to that we need to show the panel behind the screen and it's even like 20 times harder to do that behind the screen and i mean of course these auditions is the fairest way that we know how to do right now you know everything is based on audio you know you have a screen in front of you so there's no bias and completely fair and and oftentimes if you're if you're listening to the podcast then that's typically how professional auditions go

you are given a number and i remember so distinctly i had a utah symphony audition and probably the listeners know that already but i had an audition with utah symphony i was staying with a colleague at the time and i was given a number round you know i got my deposit check back and i'm like okay well now i have to spend maybe 45 five to an hour, you know, warming up with these excerpts, you know, in the room full of other people who are taking the same audition, right? And it can be super, super nerve wracking. And I think the ultimate goal is not just to play the excerpts well, because, you know, there are techniques, right? Okay, like in the Mendelssohn scherzo, you know, there's a forte piano, what

does that mean? You know, like little, little details like that. But at the end of the day, it's all about playing the music that you believe in and trying to show yourself through the music that you've studied the music. You know what the piece is about, all those extra things. Yeah. Like it needs to be in tune in time and in tone. And that's, and that's, and that's where the two of their friends, that's where the two of their friends thing comes into play.

And that like, that's, you know, the music is important, but you gotta, you gotta play in tune. you've got to have good bow control you have to make sure that you know your nerves are in check especially you know especially you know you're probably dealing with a lot of rep in a very short amount of time sometimes you have maybe two or three rehearsals for these cycles so there's a quick turnaround time i love your i love your ideas just like can't just be the technique so yes the fundamentals have to be there and it's exactly what you said there needs to be more exactly what you said just show that you understand the music and that you are responding

to what's on the page right because especially when i teach these kids um my students and it's about the history of the composer it's about the history of the piece what was a composer feeling what was he or she thinking about during the time of the piece you know those are all pretty important and sometimes it's irrelevant but it's also good to know just to have like some kind of back knowledge um and i and actually i'd love to know your thoughts on the schumann scherzo schumann scherzo except which is probably one of the scariest ones um out there for anyone who doesn't know all sometimes orchestras i think ask for maybe even nine measures and that's that's enough for them to to know like okay you can go to the second round or not so and the funny thing

we assume on scherzo is we all we rarely play it as an excerpt the way it would be played if it was the orchestra part and it's a really it's a really interesting excerpt to play yeah i i think so i mean a lot of it is just um you know dare i say muscle memory it's not muscle memory right but it's there's there's there's that level where you have to kind of focus on a micro level for everything kind of uh for everything to kind of fall into place you know that famous two-set violin except if you can play it slow you can play it fast yeah so yeah so actually that's a good transition into slow practicing uh because i love slow practicing i emphasize slow practicing with my students but oftentimes my students like

ah you know forget mr m you know forget i'll just play everything fast right but it's so obvious as a teacher and you know like i look back on my days as a student i'm like wow i get what my teachers feel now can you share your thoughts on uh slow practice and um how you approach slow practice with your students at um your teaching obligations yes i think that the mistake we make with slow practice is that when we play slow we think slow and that's the opposite it we should we should see it that um we're playing slow so we have more time to think and prepare and create all of these you know neural pathways that we need in the brain to execute in tempo we also disconnect reality to slow practice so we're playing slowly and

everything changes we're all of a sudden not in the same place in the bow we would play at a tempo we're not thinking about a shift for example because we're practicing slowly doesn't mean that we shouldn't pay attention to the speed of the shift because things won't necessarily translate in tempo if we don't pay attention to these small details there's something really fun i was talking about in my facebook group the other day the mind over finger tribe um there's an application i really like called modacity and the modacity recording platform is really great because you can record yourself and i'm sure other applications do this but i really like the way it's set up in modacity where you can record and then play it back twice as fast or twice as slow so sometimes

i ask my students to play it twice as slow and record it that way and then listen it in double tempo to see if their slow practice sounds approximately the way it would oh wow that's that's clever i didn't even think of that yeah and then you start to see that oh okay my subdivision is not really great uh why am i you know sliding this way uh that accent is not in the part you know like you start to see i'll leave the these little things and then once you go back and you play it slowly all of a sudden you've noticed all these new things you think differently when you're practicing it slowly because now your your ear is being guided towards completely new things to pay attention to and that's really what practicing is is really learning how to pay

attention and and what to pay attention to sometimes i like to reverse engineer a passage you know sometimes i have to play something fast to understand what i need to work on and then go back from there like like shifts shifts intonation if i you know if i'm playing something technical like a paganini caprice then i will try it fast once and i'll see how i feel when i play it fast and then i kind of go from there i'm like okay i know that i need to i need to do something with my elbow i need to do something with my with my hand frame so it's that could also be another practice strategy may not work for everybody but i know that sometimes that works for me i'm like i'm kind of stuck maybe i should experiment with the tempos first

see what i can see where i can go from there do you have ever uh do you ever do that with your students do you do that sometimes well i completely agree with you and that a danger of practicing slowly is that sometimes we what could i say it's like we like the courage to start playing it fast but we also need to learn how to practice it fast it's a little bit like a gymnast yes you need to understand the movements that you're exact executing sorry another french moment here um but there comes a point where you need your speed and your momentum to execute all of these you know triple axle and things like this or that's in skating doesn't matter same yeah you understand what i'm talking about but but you know it's so interesting that you mention

all these sports you mentioned biking you mentioned gymnastics you know violin is a sport in in every way you know there are auditions there are competitions and i'd love to discuss competitions in a moment of course but you know it's so funny like the you know we have so much technology around us and sometimes the best way is just like knowing who you are knowing what to do in the practice room. It's so incredible. You know, the tempo work is really important because we learn so much. Like I said, yes, we need to practice slowly to understand a lot of things and maybe set the right frames, but we have to practice in tempo also. One thing I love is a process I called, I borrowed the term from someone else and I forget who, but record,

Reflect, Refine. And you play a passage at tempo, recording yourself, either video or audio. If you tend to get distracted by visuals, maybe just listen to it once. But I feel like the video also gives us some excellent cue. And so you just play it once in tempo performance, you know, just like the spotlight. Okay, I'm on stage, I'm playing from A to B, or even shorter than that, maybe just four measures in tempo listen to it watch it and then assess you know refine and then play it right away again without practicing just try to execute everything you just thought about and record again and you do this a few times and it's really incredible not only what you think and the solutions that you come up with but there's also a part of our training that is so

embedded deeply inside ourselves that there are things we hear and we see that we will solve even without thinking about it. Like the brain identifies it right away, even without us putting words to it or even a thought to it. And then you do that a few times. What I would say though, is when you do this, the second you find yourself falling into the perfectionism mode, you're getting frustrated and you're starting to feel like you're, you know, butting your head against the wall, I would move on. You've learned what you needed to learn and then maybe come back this passage later. But the second you fall into this frustration and this perfection mode where now you're not learning anymore because you're closed off to solutions, your judgment is clouded

by frustration. So I would say that this is an excellent way of practicing record, reflect, refine, but don't let frustration enter the room with you. Yeah. And I think that's excellent advice i love what you said about not being frustrated because a lot of us get frustrated right it's easy to get frustrated i know for me i maybe back in my youth when i was practicing like so much but nowadays and i would love to get your opinion on this i would i tend to practice more efficiently in like 20 to 25 minute increments i cannot do like a one hour long session because my brain just gets fried right there's so much there's so much analysis that goes on into practicing you know that sometimes it can be overwhelming i think that's where the

frustration comes from can you talk about for a moment on how you practice or how you encourage your students to practice and the duration of the practice i love this question so much there's so much talk these days about pomodoro technique and for me i just call it pauline technique because that's my mom's name and she had me do that when i was a kid so i think that it comes with knowing yourself um i mean outside of that topic scheduling look at your schedule plan things ahead of time plan your whole week ahead of time if you have to that's what i need to do know when you're going to practice and know if you are um what i love gretchen rubin's work she calls them lark you know the if you're a morning person maybe plan your practice in the

morning or if you're a night owl maybe you're someone who needs to practice at night so i think it starts with really knowing yourself but for example i know that for me 25 minutes for the first session of the day is too short because by 25 minutes now i'm starting to get into the groove so my first session i like it to be 90 minutes i can sustain focus for that long having said that in that 90 minutes is breaking down into tons of little section i love practicing with a timer right for me right someone else might hate that and that's what i do too you know like what i meant to say was like 25 minute increments um you know like 25 minute five minute break 25 minute five minute break that kind of sort of thing so i just wanted to clarify that for anyone

i don't practice just 25 minutes okay i wouldn't have a career as a violinist if that were the case all right no but i know for me for example i'll have kind of a pretty clear idea how i will break down that 90 minutes. So I would say I love long tones. I love Shrediak scales and I try to keep variety in my technique. So flesh. I love the Roland famous book. That's kind of coming from the Korg off page. I don't know if anyone here inherited that photocopy, the famous photocopy that was passed down from teachers to students. When I was young, it was just that Korg off page, but then roland famous put that in the fantastic book um simon fisher oh my gosh simon fisher yeah wonderful exercises simon fisher there's he has like a whole collection of exercises

ranging from hand position vibrato it's incredible i think it's like it's like one of the violin bibles out there yeah and then you know i then after that i know what i need to work on if it's an audition I might start maybe with the concertos first because um earlier in the day I have more focus but you know it's like I will decide how much time I spend on the exposition of the Mozart how much time will I spend on the cadenza and if I decide I spend only eight minutes on the cadenza well what is the best use of my time what can I fix what really um I like to think of passages in terms of like green yellow and red so what's my red passage because if there's red in the page i need to go to that and i'm not saying literally red in the page but you know one passage that

needs attention but i also want to keep time for performing it and playing it and recording it so i think about all of these things and um we'll see how that works then once that first 90 minute is over as the day goes on i will shorten the sessions because i can't do you know 90 minutes times three um so then i will maybe go to an hour and then another hour and um well i can do a couple 90 minutes i mean you know if it's audition mode and you're practicing many hours a day i would do maybe 90 minutes 90 minutes and then an hour right you know it's it really depends on how you're feeling that day how much focus you feel like you have and um knowing yourself it's It's all about knowing yourself.

In addition to that, first of all, I agree with you 100%. Second of all, you need to have a plan. You need to have a plan of action for the week, for the day. You know, you can't just go into your practice and be like, yeah, I'm just going to practice. I'm just going to practice whatever I feel like, right? There's got to be a goal. You know, if you're not goal setting, then that is not mindful practice, right? Yes.

not at all mindful and i also want to comment in addition to what you said earlier is the fact that perception is different than reality and what you said about the recording i think i might torture my students now so um yeah what we think sounds good may not necessarily sound good to the audience and or vice versa well you know like what we think might not sound good actually turns out to be great in in a concert hall and in an audition setting so that is um you know an experiment and by the way all of this takes time it doesn't happen overnight you know we're well into our careers and you know if you implement these strategies throughout a long period of time you know in addition to the practicing you've done in conservatory or music school or if you're in

your youth listening this is what it takes right and especially in an ever-growing um you know musical culture things are we're needing to adapt especially now that we're a lot of the things are online now given the as of this interview you know due to the you know pandemic and the COVID-19 crisis you know there's a lot of uncertainty but you know the in earlier episodes of the violin podcast we suggested that you know take advantage of this time you know especially in the summer so i would love your i would love for you to speak about your summer project and how you're implementing you know practice methods and changing young musicians lives over the summer this year absolutely yeah thanks for asking i appreciate it um yes this pandemic is really

interesting. A big part of my work also goes towards self-compassion. And I like to joke, like not in the sense that, oh, it's okay to play out of tune. No, not at all. But in the sense that you don't have to hate yourself if you play out of tune. Exactly. Exactly. And so the first thing I did, this was very unplanned, but I like things when they unfold organically. I like to listen to my instinct and to what I feel drawn towards. And I remember clearly, this was after my last rehearsal here at the Lyric Opera. And it was becoming very clear that things were going to get canceled. And as a matter of fact, on the way home, I got an email saying that yes, the ring cycle was canceled. And I was just devastated, just devastated. And my plan was to go to the

gym and i decided to do it anyway because i just i don't know what else right now you have the free time and i um this was before they were closed of course so i was on the elliptical and and just feeling kind of in shock and not knowing what to do and not knowing what to think not knowing what the summer was going to look like just and devastated to not have the opportunity of playing this incredible um you know this massive masterpiece with my amazing colleagues we've been working so hard and I just kept asking myself but like what is there left what is there left and for me I know that when I'm really hurt I always look for something to do I need I need to you know act and usually I want to find something that I can do with others so that I have a need

for connection and the answer that came to me at some point it just like hit me and then the whole idea came all at once. It was just like, oh my gosh, yes, joyful practice. I mean, the music is left. I don't have performances, but I became a musician because I love holding this instrument in my hand and playing it. And well, okay, I don't have work for the next few days, but I have my violin. I have the music and I have the time. And, you know, I can totally devote time to really treating myself and exploring so I came with this idea of the joyful practice challenge with which we did in the tribe in March and I released a podcast episode about that last week where I included all of the prompts from the challenge so it really was a way to kind of take the time

just 10 minutes a day to focus on ways to bring joy and ease and flow and mindfulness in the practice and it kind of concurred with a time where for years I've been you know researching doing a lot of you know hardcore research I mean I don't know if hardcore is the word but you know like sound research it sounds hardcore so let's just leave it at that really like reading studies everything I could get my hands on analyzing you know what I would see in the studio but also I have a lot of experience myself as a performer and taking audition and teaching and I had been working for several months and creating a program that was going to be a online coaching program and when all of this happened I thought maybe now is not the time and they were really rattled

and I remember at the end of the challenge out of the blue it just came to me like this I told the tribe about it it was like I came up with this program that was going to come out in June and now I'm thinking should I cancel because we're so rattled and right away people start commenting like no launch it because we need that and when I saw the reaction I was like okay well we're gonna go as planned so this is starting soon June 1st it's the music mastery experience and it's a 12 weeks program on really how to practice mindfully and perform optimally so it's all of my accumulated experience and knowledge put into one online program. And it's highly personalized because it really, you know, it's not an online course.

You download the video, you watch it, take some notes. That's not what it is. We're all in this together. It's not like a webinar, right? Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we meet twice a week. We have coaching.

We talk. We problem solve. You know, I'll present some concepts for sure. and we have trainings and coachings and a lot of interaction and I'm so excited about it because like I said I love nothing more than to talk music with other people so that's I'm very excited about this and I feel like if anything and everybody's said it since the beginning of this but if anything there seems to be a real need for all of us to come together and go back to the essence, which is to share and connect. So in many ways, this pandemic is really devastating

for our community. And I don't think we're seeing yet all of the ramifications. And I'm not saying it's going to be easy. But the silver lining at the same time is I see this beautiful coming together, you know, everyone rallying, showing their best selves, putting things out there, reaching out connecting so it's a mixed blessing for sure yeah they're um you know my wife and I we talk about the the silver lining you know what is what are the what can be the benefit of this COVID-19 pandemic you know thousands of people are you know are you know are devastated by getting having this virus but you know i think that through this pandemic it's showed us how we how much we need art in the world how much we need music in the world it is so

clearly obvious that you know a lot of the people who are sitting at home and who are not artists you know they're listening to music because it helps comfort them right and that is our job as a musician to not just not just play music but to share music and you know that's that's why i wanted to bring up your program because i think it's such a fabulous idea i think is what we need right now and it's just it's just a great idea so thank you for sharing that and is there a way this podcast episode will be probably released in the middle of your program are people able to join in or is it kind of like limited limited slots available kind of thing yeah there's limited slots available because i really want to keep it to um a group right because it's really an

experience where we support and inspire each other and it's important to feel like it's a you know a small family so there's limited spots the program starts june 1st so the you know the door will closed before that, but I will be running it again in January. So my plan is to run it twice a year. Wonderful. I would, I would love to, uh, learn more about that. You know, once that time comes during the winter months and, you know, just to comment on the uncertainty right now, I think everybody listening and watching are not sure what's going to happen. I think that is a big, you know there's a big if you know what like what's going to happen uh you know a lot of classical classical music organizations and this is real talk right now and you know this is you

know part of the business we have to kind of figure it out together you know we don't know what's going to happen if you know the you know by january if things are going to open up maybe they might open up sooner they might open up later but my guess unfortunately is probably going to be later more than sooner because of you know the you know the gathering of large crowds especially in our business you know that's there's a there's definitely a high risk involved in that so I'm curious to know what your thoughts are virtual performances virtual classes you know you're obviously going to be hosting a virtual workshop do you see this heading in the direction do you think that this is the pivot in our classical music history right now that we're

going to be looking back on this and be like what you know what i mean you know the question i'm trying to ask i was wondering yeah it's uh i think there's two aspects of it i strongly believe in online education um i've been in that world for a while i've had coaches i have a coach right now she's in California and I have you know people in my program all over the world and it's so amazing because there are no barriers anymore you want to learn from someone if they don't live 10 miles from you that's not a problem so I really believe that in the right format online education is incredible it's amazing plus you never have to leave your house it's awesome yeah that that's that's the beauty of it right yes having said that yes it's fine to check on my students from

time to time but i i think that there is a need for you know one-to-one in-person teaching for instrumental mastery for sure so when it comes to online education it's a great way to give notions and concepts and yeah you can do you know maybe check in here and there checking that all the notes are there and the rhythm and you know you can even maybe check a little bit of the form and the bow hold things like this but it's really difficult to look exactly at what you want when you are limited by what the image is for you on the screen so yeah i i don't think that it needs it should be limited to online in terms of instrumental education it's difficult but i think they can work together really really well and then for performances it's tricky because

you know i think that there's so many amazing things out there i love all of the live performances that have been happening but we're definitely going to have to rethink this format in terms of like what is going to happen for orchestra performances in the future um so i don't know what direction this will go in i'm already seeing some chamber music groups coming back together and doing live streaming um with really high quality equipment so it's like broadcast quality equipment that's that's pretty great i think if if there is a way to uh figure out a platform where you know it's like a virtual concert hall i mean that already exists for sure but there's a way to maybe make that a little bit easier for the public um i'm

not sure there's so many directions so many questions right and i you know and i asked this um especially in last week's episode with timothy chui that i you know we talked about you know because he's a soloist and what what does it mean for him especially now that all the concerts are canceled through the fall and that's that's gonna be uh it's gonna be a challenge i'm curious to know what kind of solutions we'll come up with and if you have ideas please leave them in the comments section because uh you know we're trying to make these you know music communities a community and a family so leave the comments down below and you know not no idea is a bad idea at this point you know trying everything i think human beings are so resilient and so resourceful

i think that a year from now we're probably going to be amazed at like what we came up with as solutions it's unclear right now like you say but i i you know i don't think we're going to give up i sure hope not and i hope that we'll just continue we'll just continue pushing on and be resilient as you said my last question for you uh before we get to the violin podcast trivia which is one of my favorites and my my question for you is just like the question that i asked previous guests on the violin podcast what does it mean to be a musician to you and you might have touched on this earlier but you know what does it mean to be a musician for you in the year 2020 well i don't know in the year 2020 or maybe the year 2020 really actually gives us all the

opportunity to embody what we want to be as musician because we really have to think hard we can't just go through the motions and follow the path as we've been doing in the past um you know what's interesting is for me i started when i was so young and it's almost as if renee the violinist is such a big part of who renee is that they're almost impossible to disassociate um it's so much of my identity and i think that what it's given me in terms of you know the things that we've discussed it's it's a journey It's a path. It never stops. We always grow. We always evolve. And I think that it really has given me the curiosity to always search for more. And the other thing that I love about it is really, I mean, kind of a big reason why I became a musician was how much fun I was having at Youth Orchestra. and is this is this coming together this i mean i think we've all felt it i mean

one of my favorite composers just a kovach and i remember the first time i played just a kovach seven and just like the hair rising in the back of my neck when you're sitting in the middle of this massive sound with so many other human beings sinking in sync hopefully uh and really just, you know, you really feel like you're part of something that's much greater than yourself. I just, I love that so much. Well, that's all so amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us today. Dr. Renee, thank you so much for coming on to this week's episode of the Violin Podcast. For anyone watching or listening, please make sure to visit the Mind Over Finger podcast. You won't regret it. It's a great podcast for violin practice tips, strategies, how-tos

from violinists around the world. Thank you, Renee. Thank you so much for having me, Eric. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Eric Murgala from the Violin Podcast. I would love to know what your favorite takeaways were, so get in touch with me and with Eric. I'm Mind Over Finger on both Instagram and Facebook,

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tag us so we know you enjoyed the episode and we can keep the conversation going with you. Don't forget to check out the violin podcast on your favorite podcast app or by visiting violinpodcast.com. And as always, I have all the information related to this episode in the show notes for you. You can find them via your podcast app or by visiting mindoverfinger.com slash podcast. While you're there, you can find more information about mindful, efficient practice and performance preparation.

download my free guide to an exceptionally productive practice and all the details on how you can work with me so that's it for today again thank you and à bientôt